C Box - Winterkill

“There’s my boy.” Nate smiled and nodded and clapped Joe on the back of his coat. “Then we need to persuade her to retire and leave,” Nate said. “So we need leverage. How well do you know her?”

“Not well enough,” Joe said. “I’m not sure anyone really knows her.”

“But you know her well enough to have a good idea about what she likes, what’s important to her, right?”

Joe thought about it. He thought of two things. They went inside to Joe’s office and Joe asked Nate to wait a moment. He went upstairs to check on Marybeth. She had been crying. Joe tried to comfort her, but she didn’t want comforting. Seeing her like that steeled Joe’s determination to do something. He left Marybeth, went downstairs to the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of bourbon, dropped ice into two waterglasses, and carried it all into his office. He shut the door.

For the next two hours, they discussed it. Eventually, they agreed on a plan.

It began to snow.

At 4:52 the next afternoon, Joe Pickett entered the U.S. Forest Service office in Saddlestring and sat down on a vinyl couch that looked as if it had been purchased during the Ford Administration. While he brushed snowflakes off the manila folder he had brought with him, he smiled at the receptionist.

“I’m here to see Melinda Strickland.”

The receptionist glanced at the clock on the wall. The office would close in eight minutes. She had already put her purse on her desk and gathered up her coat. Joe knew from experience that no one in the office worked a minute past five. It was the same situation at most state and federal offices.

“Is she expecting you?”

“She should be,” Joe said, “but I doubt it.”

“Your name?”

“Joe Pickett. And please tell her it’s important.”

The receptionist was a new employee, someone recently hired by Melinda Strickland to replace the last receptionist, who was one of the two women who had filed the grievance. Joe recognized her from a previous job she had held in a local credit union. She was unsmiling, and squat, brusque. He watched her as she rapped on Melinda Strickland’s closed door. Then she went inside and shut the door behind her.

Joe heard the murmur of voices, one of them raising in pitch. In a moment, the door reopened and the receptionist returned to her desk for her purse and coat.

“She asked that you make an appointment for later in the week.”

“I see,” Joe said. “Did you tell her it was important?”

The receptionist glared at Joe.

“Yes.”

“Did you tell her it was about her dog ?”

She was suddenly flustered. As Joe had suspected, the receptionist had been there long enough to realize the special relationship Strickland had with her cocker spaniel.

“No. What about her dog?”

Joe shook his head. “I need to talk with Ms. Strickland privately, please.”

The receptionist huffed and turned on her heel and went back into Strickland’s office. Behind him, Joe heard a brief rush of employees turning off lights and closing office doors. It was five, and they streamed out of the building so quickly that the outside door never shut between them.

Melinda Strickland opened her door, clearly agitated. She stood to one side to let the receptionist back through so she could go home. Strickland’s hair was the coppery color it had been when Joe first met her three months before.

“What is this about Bette?”

Joe had forgotten the name of her cocker spaniel. He stood up.

“Do you have a minute?” he asked.

Strickland’s eyes flashed. She hated surprises, but she loved her dog. Joe knew that.

“Ms. Strickland…?” the receptionist asked, poised behind her desk.

“Yes, go on home,” Strickland snapped at her employee. “I’ll lock things up in a minute.”

Joe pushed by Melinda Strickland in her doorway and walked into her office. The room was in a shambles. Papers, notebooks, and mail were piled on the chairs, on the desk, and in the corners. She had made quite a mess in a short period of time. He cleared a hardback chair of papers and sat down across from her desk to wait for her.

Peeved that he had entered her office uninvited, she strode around her desk and sat down facing him. “What?” she demanded.

He coolly looked around the room. The only things of a personal nature on the side wall were a framed cover of Rumour magazine and a photo of Bette.

“Joe, I…”

“Your actions killed my daughter,” Joe said simply, letting the words drop like stones.

She recoiled as if stung.

“You and I both know what happened up there on the mountain,” he said, holding her eyes until she looked away. “Your agency exonerated you. But we’re talking about the real world now. I was there. You caused her death, and the death of three other people.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she spat. “You are a sick man.” She looked everywhere in the room except at Joe.

“You didn’t even send my wife a note.”

“Leave my office this instant, Warden Pickett.”

Joe leaned forward and cleared a spot on her desk for the manila folder he had brought with him. He placed it there but didn’t open it.

“There’s no way you can bring April back,” Joe said. “But there are a couple of things you can do to at least partially absolve your guilt.”

Her hands thumped on the desktop. “I’m guilty of nothing!”

“Of course, it’s not even close to enough…,” Joe continued, opening the folder as if Strickland hadn’t spoken, “… but it’s something. It will make my wife feel better. And it will make me feel better. It might even make you feel better.”

“Get out of my office!” Strickland screeched, her face contorted with rage. It was clear to Joe she wasn’t used to people ignoring her orders.

Joe went on, directing his attention again to the paper he was reading. “The first document here is a press release creating the April Keeley Foundation for Children,” he said. He glanced up and saw that she was listening, although her face was white and tense. “The initial twenty-five thousand dollars for the Foundation is to be donated by you from the trust fund your father set up for you. If you can give more than that, it would be even better.”

He searched the document so he could quote directly from it. “The purpose of the Foundation is to ‘advocate for better protection and legislation for children in foster care.’ You’ll be a hero again. Maybe there will be a story in a magazine about you not only saving a forest but also protecting foster children.”

“What is this?” she said. “Where did you get that?”

“I wrote it up last night,” he said, shrugging. “Press releases are not my specialty, but I think it’s okay.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Release it under your signature. Then call one of your press conferences and announce it.” An edge of sarcasm had crept into his voice, and a slight smile tugged at his mouth.

Strickland was clearly aghast. Joe hadn’t seen her face so contorted before.

“And something else,” he said, removing the other document from the folder. “Your resignation letter. You can sign it and announce it during your press conference. It will look like you’re quitting in order to do good work for children. Everybody likes that . The real reason will be our little secret.”

The resignation letter had been easy to write for Joe. He had simply used the one he had been working on, and changed the names.

“Sign these, and we can both go home,” Joe said, placing the documents in front of her.